Defender

“You’re not speaking to me,” Bren said and shot right ahead: “Through me, you’re speaking to the dowager, captain. She’s delighted to be aboard and pays you the signal honor of coming to youin your premises rather than requiring you to come to her in audience… thereforeshe came to present her compliments, making you a head of state, captain, and a very favored person.”

Sabin’s eyes were hard and black, still in attack mode, not a bit dissuaded. But she didn’t call security to shoot the lot of them. “That’s all well and good, sir, but I’ll call on your good offices to be damned sure this doesn’t happen again. Now if you’ll get the woman out of here, we have work to do.”

“Captain.” Jase was going to try.

It wasn’t a good idea, in Bren’s experience. He drew a breath and kept going across the ice floes. “The dowager’s come here to pay respects. There’s a reciprocation expected.”

“The hell!” Sabin kept going, but Bren rode right over the top of the outburst.

“You want your supplies, captain—I assume you want your supplies—perhaps we’d better continue this discussion in your office.”

“Here’s good enough.” But Sabin had lowered her voice, and applied her version of conciliation. “I’m damned busy, Mr. Cameron. Get her the hell out.”

“She does understand some Mosphei’, captain. Please use restraint.”

“I am using restraint. I want her off this deck. I want you and her and these people down on deck five and I don’t want to hear from you again until we’re at our destination, at which time I’ll tell you where we are and I don’t want to hear from you after that until we’re back in port at this star. Is that clear?”

“Let me convey for the dowager that she may demand to leave this ship, and if she leaves this ship the diplomatic fallout will be extremely disadvantageous to everything we’ve spent the last number of years building—which I assure you won’t help this ship.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

“Far from it. The dowager’s come here to invite you to supper this evening.”

The look on Sabin’s face was astonishing. An expression. A moment of utter, unguarded shock.

“Economical to accept,” Bren said rapidly, before Sabin formulated a reply. “Establishing a cordial tone aboard, bringing the very expert services of her security harmoniously into your service, and the services of the paidhiin, to boot. We’re good, captain. You arehearing me, and I don’t think that was your original intention. We’ll be very pleased to apply our talents to your opposition if you’ll oblige the dowager, win her good will, and make our jobs easier. Besides, she sets a very good table.”

Three expressions from Sabin in rapid succession: shock, outrage, and targeting calculation.

“You’re the damned cheekiest bastard I’ve met in a lifetime.”

“Yes, ma’am, and you’re no pushover, on the other side. If our interests really did diverge, I’d be worried, but I happen to know our best interests and your interests are the same. Besides, you deserve a good dinner, and it won’t be wasted time. You’ll score a relationship that’ll make a big difference out there… that will outright assure you come back here to a working station with resources.”

“Is that a threat, Mr. Cameron?”

“No, captain, it’s a pretty good forecast. If this relationship goes bad, everything goes bad; if it goes brilliantly, everything becomes easier. Let me add my personal plea to the case: accept the invitation and you’ll have my assurances I’ll do everything possible to persuade her of yourpoints. I can’t stress enough how great an honor the dowager’s done you by coming here: she’s put her dignity on the line so as to make clear how greatly she respects your authority. Now it’s very useful for your side to respect and accept her hospitality.”

“ Damnedcheeky bastard, Mr. Cameron.”

“Which I trust refers solely to me, captain, and I hope signals your gracious acceptance.”

“There’s nothing gracious about it.”

“The traditional supper hour, for these affairs. Full dress. She’ll spare no effort to honor her guest.”

“How long am I expected to be honored? I’ve got a ship in the process of boarding.”

“About three hours.”

“Flaming hell.”

“You’ll find it worth your while. Eighteen hundred hours, senior captain. She’ll very much understand if you don’t reciprocate with a dinner of your own, given the pressure of events; but she’ll be pleased to entertain you to the utmost.” He switched to Ragi. “The captain, though pressed for time, is inclining to accept, aiji-ma, understanding the great honor you give her.”

Ilisidi inclined her head benignly. “Very good, paidhi-ji. At the fortunate hour.”

“She’s very pleased,” Bren said, regardless of Sabin’s not-quite-expressed consent. “She honors your good will. Understand, as a great lord proceeds about necessary courtesies even under fire, proving one isn’t at all harried. She views you very favorably.”

“Damned nonsense.” From Sabin it was a moderate response.

“My personal gratitude,” Bren said. “Eighteen hundred hours, at our section: staff will meet you there. The aiji-dowager’s good will and good wishes in fortunate number, ma’am.”

He turned. He managed to include Jase in the sweep of his arm toward the exit, but Jase declined the refuge and drifted there slightly askew from them.

One trusted at least there wouldn’t be bloodshed on the bridge. Sabin might have plenty yet to vent, but if appearances were an indication, Sabin was in control, and if she was thinking, she wouldn’t let fly until the two of them were in an office with the door shut.

Under those circumstances he trusted Jase could hold his own and keep his head.

“Mr. Kaplan,” Jase said calmly, “see them below.”

“Yes, sir.” Kaplan opened the door which had self-shut.

“And where is Jase-paidhi?” Ilisidi demanded.

“Preparing to account to Sabin-aiji for bringing us here, aiji-ma,” Bren said, “which I trust he can do.”

“He will suffer no detriment!” Ilisidi said, and turned and addressed Jase. “Assure us this is the case!”

“Aiji-ma, without a doubt.”

“Well!” Ilisidi said, and by now the door had shut itself again. Kaplan scrambled to open it, and they left under Kaplan’s guidance.

It wasn’t that easy, and Sabin would have words of her own, but Ilisidi expected her below, and Sabin had accepted that.

Amazing, Bren thought. Astonishing.

He could imagine several scenarios to follow, in several of which Sabin decided not to come after all, and precipitated an atevi war. Jase, if he could make the point, would faithfully inform her there wasn’t any change of plans possible, not at this point—not without the attendant war, at least.

He’d been steady enough during the exchange. Now, in the stomach-wrenching reverse of the lift action, he found his knees weak. If there’d been a floor to stand on, he thought he’d have felt them going. As it was, he simply tried not to twitch against his escort, and not to shiver as Jago cushioned their arrival on deck five. That brought a little moment of contact with the deck, and if not for Jago, he thought he would have stumbled, if nothing else, from the welter of confusing directions.

Not the dowager. The lift door opened and she emerged with Cenedi, perfectly in command.

“We shall see you at supper,” she said, “paidhi-ji.”

“Honored, nand’ dowager.”

What elsewas there to say? He didn’t plan to eat. His mind was off into a dozen more scenarios, frantic in its application. War or peace was a hell of a dessert choice, and somehow in his management of affairs, his nudges this way and that, his quest after a piece of tape had ended up in a confrontation between aijiin.

Well to have it now, if it was going to happen, while they were still at dock and had options. The thought of Ilisidi pent up in a ship with a captain whose murder she fondly wished—a captain who was the onlycaptain capable of running the ship’s operations—was unthinkable.

God, he wanted to stay on the ground. He wanted to go back down to the planet and go back to his estate with his staff and wait there for it all to be over… but that wasn’t a choice he’d given himself.

He had to get the authorities through this set of formalities, and he had to ask himself if Ilisidi thought she was going to askfor the ship’s log or if his search for the records had become a complete side-channel to the dowager’s intentions of running matters wherever she was. Certainly no one had informed Sabin she was second to the aiji-dowager on her own deck.

If anyone did have to convey that information, he knew all too well who the translator had to be.

They arrived into a scene of managed chaos, the midst of null-g preparations for the invitation… preparation which their constant communications net had already set into motion.

Bundles were everywhere in the paidhi’s quarters, soft bundles, in general, which floated where they were not jammed tightly in, bundles that should give forth their contents and then fold down inconspicuously and with little mass.

Bundles were lodged up near the ceiling and a few were tucked into the narrow passage between bed and bath, rather like the egg-cases of an infestation of insects; and the bed itself—fortunately extendable—had a transparent half lid of sorts, which had not come down, and behind which a few smaller parcels were tucked as if for ready reference. Bundles were secured in the bath, bundles were stored in the shower stall, besides one that seemed to have exploded, strewing far more wardrobe into the zero-g of the premises than it could reasonably have contained.

Amid it all, Banichi and Jago had cases of electronics yet to set up, two of which they immediately emptied, donating them to Narani’s urgent demand for a flat surface. They were still searching for the pressing-iron, and exactly how they proposed to use that in null-g remained to be seen.

“Press cloth in these circumstances, Rani-ji?” Bren objected. “The second-best shirt will do. I’m sure it will do.”

“Paidhi-ma,” Narani objected, “I beg you allow us to try. For our pride’s sake, nandi. The coat has gotten rumpled, among other calamities. And the captains are invited.”

Staff continued their unpacking, cursing the insistence of ship security on inspecting certain of the items in an entirely unacceptable fashion, and at the last moment, of stowing the contents of the baggage cart in a haphazard hurry. Things had gone askew from plan, and it wasn’t in any way the atevi-ordered arrangement of rooms that let the staff do their duty in an orderly way. The staff was entirely distressed.

Meanwhile there was the scale of things. Banichi and Jago had quarters adjacent to his, and communicating by a door between as well as their own corridor access. A suite of rooms, the charts called the arrangement, each with clear floor about four strides long and two strides wide, which turned out to be, when occupied by atevi, human strides, if they were able to stride at the moment—and entirely too small. Niggling minor problem—storage for atevi-scale clothing was impossible in the tiny lockers provided for the original colonists. Greater problem: low human-scale ceilings made it very scant clearance for tall atevi such as Banichi even to stand up, once they were standing, and made a room in which four or five atevi were drifting askew a very small-seeming room indeed.

Those were situations for which they had been moderately prepared—at least in planning, before they tried to maneuver past one another. The closet and the food-storage closets were both what the ship called suites, and those were full, at the moment, Bren was told, of floating bags. The unpacked clothing would ultimately fit on lines to contain and order the wardrobes, once there was gravity, which now there was not. The unpacked security equipment had clamps and braces which did not mate to the room, rather to more gear that itself had to be fixed in place under these conditions, and which had to stay in place once there wasgravity.

More, the galley stores and the security equipment included heavy items, and in the grand scale of things, even the dowager’s invitation took second place to the need to get the heavy equipment and bundles sorted to the bottom and secured before undocking—before the simulated gravity sent the heavy things crashing down on the light ones. And on that score, there had been argument. Crew had advised them in a written communiqué not to take things into quarters, to leave them in cargo until after undock, and he had said no, they would take them in nevertheless. So doubtless crew who had shoved things into the cabins were quite smug about it all. So a jaundiced suspicion could guess.

And here they were, everything in their own control, if one could call it control—with a formal dinner unexpectedly at hand and baggage everywhere.

His luggage, however, was bulk rather than mass, and at least posed few breakage hazards.

“Just pad the equipment with mybags,” he told Banichi and Jago, when there was question of bringing Tano and Algini board for a few hours to do the installation while they pursued Ilisidi’s notion of formal entertainment. “We aren’t going to be able to get this installed before we move. My shirts won’t break. And we shouldn’t pull Tano and Algini off internal security. I truly don’t like that notion, Banichi.”

“One can try to secure things,” Banichi said. “Or we can draw personnel from Cenedi, perhaps before launch.”

“I’m sure I have enough clothes. I’m sure I have far too many clothes. Do it, Banichi.”

Meanwhile the domestic staff, which had expected a decent interval to do its necessary arranging, now searched to find, among other necessities of life, old-fashioned vegetable starch, which they intended to boil—one asked—in a sealed bag in the microwave… which also had to be unpacked and secured. One did not want to imagine the zero-g consequences of a burst bag of starch.

They had, however, located the pressing-iron—which fortunately waselectric, not a flatiron as the old arrangement had been.

Plugging it in, however, required a unit and a small, unreasonably mislaid adapter to mediate between its three-pronged plug and the ship’s power clips. That was well enough: they needed the adapters for the microwave, too.

The staff oh so rarely missed a social forecast. Narani had so carefully had his less formal second-best pressed, protected, and ready for what had, to Narani, seemed likely: an informal dinner with the dowager.

They had certainly been sandbagged. Caught out, half-prepared—excusable, under the pressure of their sudden departure; but now there was no margin.

“I could surelymake do with the casual coat, Rani-ji,” Bren reiterated, foreknowing the futility of that protest; and, no, no, even yet, absolutely not. Narani would perish of shame if he sent the paidhi-aiji to a state dinner in his second-best coat and trousers, and he would not admit defeat, yet, no matter the lack of adapters.

Not to mention that Banichi and Jago had to have theirformal uniforms and everything of their individual spit and polish, and the equipment that went with them. That necessity had Asicho in a dither, because those hadn’t been readied, either.

There was at least time to bathe, once Asicho shifted the baggage out of the paidhi’s shower, and Bren simply turned over the clothes he was wearing, trusting no crew would be floating by in the common hall, and took refuge in the anemic fog-shower, which at least was unaffected by lack of gravity.

It was fifteen minutes of comparative peace until the shower beeped a warning, sucked up the moisture and turned itself off.

Asicho waited with a soft, sweet-smelling bathrobe, zero-g and all.

Meanwhile the adapters had turned up, and staff, having microwaved their starch to slimy perfection, prepared his shirt for ironing.

There was something remarkably tranquil about the aroma of fresh ironing. And Banichi and Jago reported one emergency solved and their quarters secured: they had unmade their beds, corralled the fragiles in small bundles of bedding and secured them under the lowered transparent bed-lids.

Bren settled to dry his hair and check last-moment messages.

Of mail, there was none but a parting well-wish from Lord Geigi, which he answered fondly, and with kind thoughts for the one atevi in all the world who probably wanted most to be here:

I shall attempt to secure pictures to show you…

Then, in that momentary pause, somber and thinking of very far places indeed, he composed a letter to his mother, hoping Barb would read it to her.

Aboard now, and thinking of you.

I wish I could be two people, one to do things a son and a brother ought to have done, especially in these last years that I haven’t been in reach.

I think of winter in the mountains, the cabin we used to use. I think of the seashore we visited. I think of the kitchen and sitting in the morning drinking tea, and I want all that to be there when I get back. I have to go, for the safety of all we work for— but I’m coming back, and I want you to bake that really spicy teacake, and I want a few mornings to spend just like that, sopping up tea and teacake and telling you everywhere I’ve been.

Then I want to take a good few days of the vacation I’ve got coming to fly you up to the mountains and see if that cabin’s still there. It’s the good memories that sustain me.

I need you. Take care of yourself. Give my love to Toby.

With all my heart, mum. Take care and be good.

Bren.

He nerved himself and sent, a button push that necessitated a reach after the retreating computer.

He trusted C1 and Mogari-nai at this point. He had to. He had to trust very many people for everything.

He left the computer fairly securely parked against the wall, near his bed, and concentrated on the hair-drying, Asicho being busy with Jago’s uniform, and Banichi’s.

His shirt when it arrived had lace so crisp it rattled, lace inserted through the coat-sleeves beforehe put his arms in, which was the secret by which the court achieved true extravagance of dress. Bindanda snugged up first the shirt and then the frothy, razor-edged collar while Narani supported the coat from behind and kept his hair out of the lace points.

Fashion, fashion, fashion: a little out of current, he knew, but a statement, nonetheless, a declaration, a respect for the dowager and her table.

He took a strange reassurance from the lace and the excess, like some ancient warrior of the archives putting on armor, some sense of atavistic participatory extravagance that declared a class, a club, a secret society to which the dowager and he belonged. Which was in a sense the truth. It meant that she would know him, she would read him accurately, and perhaps, if things went badly, listen to him much more reasonably than if he had arrived, as he had argued to do, in less than his absolute best. Narani was right. Narani’s instincts said find the damned starch and steam the silk coat to rights, for the sake of all of them.

He anchored himself by a handgrip to have his hair dressed: Asicho spread a silk scarf across the brocade coat shoulders, and her skilled, fine fingers rendered the braid with little tugs that tried to pull him loose from his mooring.

She accomplished the ribboning immaculately, he trusted, not taking time to find a mirror: white, for the paidhi’s professional neutrality in a minefield of heraldries, associations and rivalries.

After that, in that coat of silk both fine and thick as armor, he could drift slightly askew from the ceiling and floor, let his computer drift in front of him on voice-command, and gather his thoughts over his notes and charts of ship structure and space allotments. Not a pleasant contemplation, but he had before him an assembly of his accesses, his resources, in the not-inconceivable eventuality of the dowager creating a breach with Ogun and with Sabin.

And a hostile collapse of the entire political structure.

Hadn’t Tabini said from the beginning that he intended to rule the station, that he intended there be an atevi starship?

Would thisone suit Tabini—to get a force aboard, outright takethe ship for himself?

God, no. There was the boy. Would Tabini send his only child into an arena of conflict?

Damned right, if it set his enemies off their guard, he thought, not wanting to think it: yes, Tabini would, and he would do it without many second thoughts, expecting success andthe boy’s survival, because Tabini expected extravagant things of the extraordinary people he gathered from all across the world. Tabini routinely sent his grandmotherinto situations like that—granted his grandmother was the greatest threat available.

It was possible.

Not advisable, not what he wanted to think about—but possible.

“If we need to get out of here in a hurry,” he said to Jago as she drifted by, “do you have account of the route?”

“Always, Bren-ji,” was Jago’s answer. She anchored herself by a hand against the ceiling, a very easy reach. “Shall we plan?”

“Possible,” he said. “Remotely possible. I’ll do all I can to assure it doesn’t happen.”

“Yes,” Jago said fervently.

“You’re in touch with Cenedi?”

“Constantly,” Jago said. His staff, ordinarily entirely independent, had attached themselves and him to the dowager’s—convenient, until it came to him doing anything independent, or establishing his own priorities. Like preventing a war. Or theft of a starship.

Which, God, he wasn’t sure he wanted to prevent. How could they runit, without Sabin?

“I have every confidence in Cenedi,” he said to her. “But I have utmost confidence in you and Banichi, nadi. Utmost. You are not to accept a rear guard position, or to desert me at any time.”

He conflicted man’chiin in that statement, and knew it. Theirs flowed up to Tabini himself, and by small detours, to him in the main, and to the dowager as Tabini’s representative: there was no time at which that man’chi to Tabini wavered.

“I knowthis place, these humans, and these circumstances,” he said, revealing his logic in the statement. “And the dowager ought to take my advice, but, infelicitous pair: may not. I fear a move to take the ship itself. And I will notlose from the household the two of your Guild I most trust to know and understand and defend the interests of the house, all to save some other man of the dowager’s household. I will not, Jago-ji. If any such infelicitous thing should come about, I most assuredly will need my most experienced staff around me.”

That at least occasioned Jago a moment’s consideration… possibly because the paidhi was an utter, forgetful fool and the communications she wore was live and directed to Cenedi’s staff; but it was late to moderate that statement, impossible to call it back, and, on a third thought, if it penetrated Cenedi’s consciousness of a dangerous situation, good.

He touched his own coat, in the same position in which his bodyguard wore their electronics. It was a question.

Jago touched the same spot. “It isn’t,” she said. “We don’t communicate with their staff, when we’re inside. Paidhi-ji, we would tell you.”

That was a relief. And in itself, that statement told him where man’chi lay.

“I will protect the dowager,” he said, to ease their uneasiness, “but will notsacrifice myself or my guard or my staff that I have trained up here for very important work. I feel no call to do that. And if they were to attempt to take the ship—I don’t know what we would do with it, nadi-ji.”

“We completely agree, paidhi-ji.”

This was notJago off-duty, who slept with him. No, this was Jago in official relationship, and for atevi officers, instinct-driven to take such orders from the highest in the household, it was a profound, a revolutionary statement, with implications for the rest of the voyage—if they had a voyage.

“I’m sorry to have placed you in such a position. But in my estimation, we have no choice but to maintain my independent judgment.”

“The aiji gave you very great authority. I speak for Banichi as well,” Jago said. “And our man’chi flows through youto the aiji, nandi; it takes no detours. I think I speak for the staff, except Bindanda. And hisis more aligned with us than otherwise.”

Revolution, indeed.

A paper lordship.

Or was it? His staff had read it. And theytook it seriously.

A lord in his own province—and his was the heavens themselves—could say no to very high-rank.

He was astonished. Appalled. “Jago-ji, keep me from foolishness. Say so to Banichi, Jago-ji.”

“Oh, he knows,” Jago said. “But I will tell him, nandi.”

She went on her way. He folded up his computer, finding his lands trembling.

Absolute novice’s mistake, that with the possibility of interconnected communications, and he’d made it. But gut-level, too, he’d relied on his staff, and wasn’t disappointed.

Lord of the heavens?

A rival to Ilisidi?

From a carefully insulated center of his brain that might be mostly atevi, or mostly human—he honestly didn’t know what he thought.

He’d been blindsided. He’d made one mistake. From now on he had to be flawless.

He had to think, was what Tabini expected of him. To keep the tempers on this ship in check he had to be neither-side and both-sides for at least this evening, examining everything, taking nothing for granted.

He didn’t need a computer for that preparation. The tools he needed were inside himself: calm, and ice-cold, experienced analysis of motives.

Those things, and complete, professional objectivity in his view of participants.

There was a hard one. He didn’t likeSabin.

And how was he going to keep everything restrained and reasonable at thattable?

He stowed his computer inside a locker where he knew it would be safe when down became down again. He had no intention of having a literal crash.

Tabini hadn’tset him up on this mission with Ilisidi without the cachet to go with it. His staff answered the situation, and made him put on this coat and take up the authority.

So thatwas what Jago and Narani and his whole staff had been saying when they scoured up starch and an iron? When only the best would do for Bren-paidhi?

He was a reasonably smart mender-of-the-interface. It had only taken him a half an hour to figure it out.

Near time to go down the hall and do his job.

Near time for them to go down there and try to prevent the calamity that thus far was headed for them.

His escort appeared in the door, Banichi and Jago in their court finery, shining silver and polished black leather. Their Guild remained efficient, while the lords rendered themselves incredibly baroque.

“A moment, nadiin-ji,” Bren said, settling on one preliminary item. He was near a communications unit, in major points like the one he’d had on station, and he punched in the same authority he’d always contacted for people behind the ship-folk’s communications firewall. “C1?”

“ This is C1. Is this Mr. Cameron, on five?”

“It is.” Clearly C1 had some indication where the call originated. “Contact Captain Graham. He has an appointment. Tell him call me regarding that.”

There was a pause. It would be complete calamity, if Sabin decided at the last moment not to show, and to keep Jase incommunicado. More, if he was serving as diplomatic safety net, he had to avoid mistakes and missed appointments, and his heartbeat began a slow climb to panic as the silence on the other end stretched out longer than an ordinary transfer of communications.

“ Captain Graham is en route,” C1 reported, “ and says he’ll see you in 5 B.”

That was their sector. Thank God.

“Thank you, C1.” He broke the connection and drifted gently toward his security.

So things wereon track, Sabin hadn’t thrown Jase in the brig yet, and the situation at least wouldn’t blow up before they even got started.

Chapter 17

Cenedi had a security presence in the corridor, providing two men to open the door and admit them to the cabin designated as the dowager’s dining room. It was a matter of pride with a lordly household: on the world or here above, a lordly house managed its own doors, however strung out down a common corridor, and no one else touched said doors, or did so at their peril.

It provided a homey, comfortable feeling, that formality, even if they were floating. Things were right, or at least more right than they had been a few hours ago.

And Jase wascoming. Thank God.

The outer door shut. Cenedi met them inside, in a little alcove made by stretched fabric—very ingenious, Bren thought, separating the designated dining room. “Jase is on his way,” Bren said in passing, and reached out to anchor himself and not to bump into the curtain as he drifted in.

There was a table; there were chairs. They were anchored quite firmly; and the dowager sat, or approximately sat, to welcome them, tucked into a chair and braced with pillows. She had that formidable cane in hand. By her, also tucked in with pillows, was Cajeiri, quite proper, considering; and beyond another fabric screen, the second doorway to the suite, which was, one was sure, the area from which dinner service would come.

“Aiji-ma.” Bren launched himself from the wall with fair accuracy and grace, aiming himself toward what should be the seat next the dowager on her right. He grabbed it before he overshot, and the dowager graciously bade him to a seat.

“There, there, will you care for a pillow, paidhi-aiji?”

Staff had drifted in from that farther curtain, having pillows in hand.

Pillows seemed a good idea, a clever way to wedge oneself in, and he accepted the amenity. The athletic young man immediately shot away toward the door—tracked by Cajeiri’s estimating, all-recording gaze, as every movement gained Cajeiri’s fascinated if erratic attention.

“Jase is on his way, aiji-ma,” Bren said, tucking pillows snugly. “One hopes that Sabin-aiji is with him.”

“One expectsso,” Ilisidi said. Usually by now there was a drink service, if there were late arrivals; but just then, and to his relief, Cenedi opened the doors and admitted their two missing guests.

A little delay at the door: Sabin hadn’t intended to leave her guard, but that matter was settled on a glance inside. Jase and Sabin both came drifting in, Jase assuring Sabin of the situation, that neither Cenedi nor Banichi and Jago would sit here.

So bodyguards had theirconviviality across the hall, or the corridor, or however they arranged it, in whatever area—a prime venue for exchanging informal intelligence and gossip, if it were associated houses, as it was not, in the captains’ case.

But there would be no stint of food over there, to be sure.

Jase indicated a seat of preference to Sabin, ceding that honor to his senior, when Ilisidi beckoned an invitation to them, and Sabin and Jase both sailed accurately into place, and into a chair.

“A pillow?” Ilisidi inquired, the servant standing by to offer it, and Jase accepted.

“Pillow,” Sabin muttered in mild disgust. Clearly this wasn’t the style of Sabin’s table, such as it might be, or however ship-folk managed under similar circumstances. But Sabin took it nonetheless, a nice, brocaded pillow, with fringe, and secured herself at the table.

“Welcome, welcome,” Ilisidi said. “We appreciate that these are busy hours for the ship-aijiin.”

Bren translated.

“Damned busy,” Sabin said. Sabin had been scowling when she came through the door and hadn’t improved the expression since. Clearly her interview with Jase had been heated.

“We held a conversation,” Jase said in Ragi, in the lowest possible whisper, “and the captain understands this is critically important, paidhi-aiji.”

Passing information right across the table. In Ragi.

“I have a statement,” Sabin said, jaw clenched. “At the appropriate time.”

“A welcoming statement?” Bren asked.

“Call it that. Ready?”

“The ship-aiji wishes to make you welcome to the ship, aiji-ma,” Bren said.

Ilisidi gave a modest wave of the hand.

“You can tell the aiji’s grandmother that whatever arrangements Ramirez made were Ramirez’s arrangements. They’re not mine. I won’t renege on her being here, but I won’t tolerate your native types breaking our regulations or undertaking independent operations.”

“Aiji-ma, the ship-aiji does not consider herself bound by Ramirez’s arrangements, and states strongly that while she will not disapprove your presence aboard, she does not favor it and wishes you not to initiate operations that may infringe regulations or startle ship’s officers.”

“How elegant of her,” Ilisidi said and waggled fingers. “Say that whatever the custom on the ship, business at the table is not our custom. And since she has made a demand, broach the matter of that tape Jase wants.”

“Aiji-ma.” This from Jase. “I beg you let me finesse that matter.”

“You wish to translate, ship-aiji?” Ilisidi asked.

“Jase,” Bren said, a caution, a strong caution—a plea on both knees, if there’d been an up or a down, for Jase to stay out of it, for the whole topic to wait.

“Oh, serve the drinks, nadiin-ji,” Ilisidi said, losing interest in it all, and immediately a servant entered the room from behind the curtain, bearing a closed container. The servant flungthe contents, startling them all with blue and red, yellow and orange and clear and amber globes that sailed all about the premises like so many moonlets on independent courses, to collide and carom and go on moving, sloshing liquid contents. Sabin stared in incredulity and looked alarmed, as if they’d loosed so many bombs. Cajeiri clapped his hands in glee.

“Oh, mani, may we take them?”

“The red or blue for you, young rascal of a grandson, indeed. Bren-ji, the clear or the yellow. Jase-ji, the yellow is your favorite. Let our guest suit herself.” She reached up and snared a fist-sized amber one on its way past, pulled out the recessed straw, and sipped.

Bren reached obediently for a clear globe… the likes of which they had proposed to use on the shuttle, for emergencies. “Captain, the clear globes would be vodka. The yellow, vodka and juice. The others wouldn’t be safe for us.”

Sabin picked a clear one, pulled her straw and drank. “Inventive.”

“Sabin-aiji applauds the ingenuity of the service, aiji-ma.” This, as the staff loosed another volley of planetoids, these white and yellow, which drifted more slowly through their midst.

One trusted the appetizer was safe. It was pureed, to fit through the straw, in internal sacs that collapsed, and sweet, and sour, and could be enjoyed in alternation, while one parked one’s drink—if not in orbit—at least in convenient proximity.

“Delicious,” Bren said. “My compliments to the cook.” Sabin had made a cautious trial, but Jase took to his with evident pleasure.

“Curious,” Sabin said dubiously.

“Sabin-aiji views this as novel, aiji-ma.”

“We are pleased,” Ilisidi said, the full-blown royal we, when onewas far more modest. Modesty was rarely Ilisidi’s bent. “One hopes that our table will be the aiji’s frequent recourse. Do you favor the eggs, then, Jase-ji?”

God, the minefield of royal we, self-deprecating one, and that damned familiar Jase-ji.

Do you hear it, Jase? Do you understand how to answer? She tests your fluency.

“Nand’ dowager,” Jase said with a little—a very little—nod of his head, “a great delicacy in space. I have so missed them.”

Bang. Right back, dead on. Authoritative, lordly, dignified I, not we, not one, either—with no insult about it.

Bren let go a pent breath.

Sabin had, meanwhile, emptied her globe and reached for another.

“What are these?” Sabin asked, forcing a total, appalled shift of viewpoint.

Embryonic lizardshardly seemed a good answer for a ship-bound palate. “An organic delicacy, captain.”

“Different,” Sabin said.

“Translate, paidhiin-ji,” Ilisidi requested of them.

“Sabin-aiji remarks on a novel taste,” Bren said. And added: “Ship-folk are quite restricted in palate, aiji-ma. She is experimenting with new things, not unfavorably.”

A servant had to retrieve Cajeiri’s drink, and sailed it past him. Cajeiri dislodged an appetizer reaching for it, and accidentally fired the drink off at a tangent trying to recover the nudged globe.

“Gently, gently, young man,” Ilisidi said. “Haste only startles what you wish to catch. Stalk your desires. Don’t snatch.”

The servant had secured the escaped drink, and put it into Cajeiri’s hand.

“Yes, mani,” Cajeiri said.

“Learn, rascal!”

“I do, mani.”

“This is an exchange regarding the accident,” Bren murmured by way of translation. “The aiji’s son is, of course, inexperienced in zero-g.”

“Still no place for a teenager,” Sabin muttered, and Bren masked startlement. Now that he realized it, the ship had never seemed to connect this child to Damiri’s fairly recent pregnancy, and on evidence of size, Sabin clearly had not a clue that the boy was six, not sixteen.

“My definitive statement, among others,” Sabin said glumly. “But collective decision prevailed.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Far too late to change that misperception, or to renegotiate personnel. They dared not let the captain find it out at this juncture.

“I trust,” Sabin said, “there’s a watch on this boy.”

“Yes, captain.”

“Let me add another statement to the first: no atevi wandering about outside this section without contacting the bridge for permission, until further notice, and this young fellow stays on this deck, period, under any circumstances.”

“Captain, I’ll happily relay that at the appropriate moment.”

“Now, sir.”

He tried to think whether to lie, or whether to proceed; but lying—had its own problems soon to appear. And things could only escalate. Ilisidi, at least, was calm. “Aiji-ma,” he said, “with personal apologies from the translator, the captain considers this urgent. She wishes us not to leave this section without direct contact with her, for a period of time that seems to be impermanent, one gathers until she’s more certain of us, and wishes you not to allow the heir to leave this section under any circumstances.”

“This ship-aiji is very persistently rude, is she not? I never detected this in you, Jase-aiji. It can’t be custom.”

“Aiji-ma,” Jase said, “this aiji is reputed for direct statement and attention to agriculture.”

“Business,” Bren interposed, and Jase blushed.

“To business,” Jase said. “Forgive me, aiji-ma.”

A waggle of fingers. Ilisidi had emptied three of the white globes—empty ones sailed off to be captured and whisked out of sight—and she sent the third away.

“We are not mentioning to the captain that Cajeiri is six,” Bren said. “She believes sixteen.”

“Sixteen?” Cajeiri crowed, delighted.

“Hush, rascal,” Ilisidi said.

“It’s a convenient misunderstanding,” Bren said, “saving argument. And there would be argument about his presence otherwise, in a dangerous place. Human custom is against it.”

“Do you hear?” Ilisidi said. “You must pretend ten more years, young scoundrel, to satisfy the ship-aiji’s expectations of your wisdom, your sense, and your self-restraint.”

“I think the ship-aiji will suspect me,” Cajeiri said sadly, and the Ragi-speakers could not but laugh a little.

“There’s a problem?” Sabin asked.

“The boy regrets his youth,” Bren said. “And amuses his elders. I should urge you, now, captain, in the very strongest terms, to delay further business discussion. We’re now approaching the heart of the meal, which atevi hold entirely sacred. Particularly should there be a meat course, which may, under these circumstances, be soup… be most respectful of it.”

“I don’t eat meat,” Sabin said.

Sabin was pushing. Hard. Deliberately. And the translator himself was losing patience.

“One will relay that, captain.—Aiji-ma, the ship-aiji reminds us of the customs of ship-dwellers, and requests all others enjoy the offering of the season, but she is unaccustomed, and requests exception.”

“One has indeed remembered this intelligence,” Ilisidi said lightly. “Advise our guest that the sole white globe will be an offering for her taste.” This, as servants glided forth and very deftly, very respectfully, placed globes before each of them—four light gold, veined with steam between the plastic and the globe walls; and one white globe, with cold condensation, which the servant placed before Sabin.

One… white globe.

Oh, my God, Bren thought, just this least, small apprehension.

“Aiji-ma,” he said, and received a short, swift gesture in reply.

Should he defy that warning? Should he dosomething? Could he betray Jase, among other considerations?

And should he open his mouth and have security opposed to security and the whole mission aborted and the whole ship-human/planetary association come crashing around their ears—with Tabini’s son and grandmother up here in the very heart of the ship?

He could keep his mouth shut, and trust Ilisidi to respect his honor, and play by the rules of the culture he’d devoted his life to preserving and advancing in good season—or he could assure a war.

He looked straight at Ilisidi, who looked straight at him, not smugly, but in sober intent.

“Not bad,” Sabin said, sampling the offering.

Sabin, whose bodyguard, outside, in the company of his own, likely included Jenrette.

“Jase-ji,” Bren said, resolved to tell Jase, knowing after all else he had been through with Jase, that frankness was the only safety. “One should be prepared. The ship-aiji has challenged the dowager. There will undoubtedly be adverse results.”

“Aiji-ma,” Jase said, not, Bren thought guiltily— nothaving twigged to the source of the hazard. “One wishes, however inexpertly, to advance the cause of my senior, who is not a wicked woman, and who is accustomed to give orders for the sanity of the ship…”

Safetyof the ship, but it was within reason: Bren forebore a distracting correction.

“If she has offended you, aiji-ma,” Jase said, “it was not intent to do so. Great respect for your authority has brought her at a very busy time.”

“We accept that. Let her give us the tape. Ask her.”

“Captain,” Jase said, on a deep, deep breath. “There would have been a tape record—covering the entry of personnel onto Reunion.”

“What’s that to do with anything?”

“The aiji would like to see that tape. It wouldbe in the log. Wouldn’t it?”

“What’s in the log or not is our business. When did this come up?”

And is Sabin wearing a wire? Bren asked himself, calmly taking a sip of an excellent cream soup. And is it feeding to someone with at least rudimentary knowledge of Ragi?

And are we in deep water already?

God, what ought I to do?

“It occurred to me,” Jase said, leaving Yolanda innocently out of it, “that if we had security aboard, electronics would have recorded that excursion aboard the station.”

Sabin had half-emptied the globe, and took a drink of vodka besides.

“And of course you went straight to your atevi friends with that theory.”

“Friends, captain, can’t apply with atevi. But I assure you they’d think of it for themselves once they familiarized themselves with the ship’s general practices, and it wouldn’t be good to have them think of it before we’d said, and it wouldn’t be good to spring a surprise on them after we’re out there.”

“So of course you spilled it on yourwatch.”

“My watch is my watch, captain, and when I’m on the bridge I do my job. This is the best thing to do.”

The captain took another long drink of soup, one of those imposed silences, in which she needn’t speak, needn’t answer. It took the globe down to a quarter.

We’re in it now, Bren thought. And if she’d honestly be persuaded to reason, on her own, and we’ve done this…

“Mr. Cameron,” Sabin said, utterly redirecting to him, on the other side of the table, “what do you think?”

“I think the presentation of those tapes would be a gesture of good will.” He should say something. He should.

“I think I made my position clear. You’re passengers. Not command personnel. Evidently you’ve received a briefing from my brother captain. But this is an internal matter of ship’s records, and no more is forthcoming. You can convey thatto the aiji’s grandmother.”

Or maybe not.

Cajeiri had lost a drink globe, and reached suddenly to retrieve it. Bren’s nerves jumped. Jase’s surely did. They were the only ones who might understand both sides of the conversation—give or take, Banichi, Jago, and the chance of one of Ilisidi’s young men understanding; and he didn’t put it past her limits. His advisors knew at least sketchy details, and hadn’t intervened, hadn’t given him a signal—nothing.

“I can’t urge enough,” Bren said, “that we are a resource to the ship, a well-disposed one, and it would be a very, very bad decision to breach agreements that brought her into this mission. Is that what I understand you’re doing?”

“Mr. Cameron, the Mospheiran delegate will be boarding about now. And I’m sure shehas her expertise—hers happening to be technical, with the robots, and if things don’t go well, and possibly if they do, her expertise will have its moment. And at that time, with the thanks of us all, she will do her job. Now that is a useful talent. Exactly what the dowager does besides observe isn’t exactly clear to anyone, but she will be free to observe to her heart’s content. I’m sure it’s a useful talent, but it’s not one I need underfoot right now.”

Absolute reversal of agreements, Bren thought in dismay. He saw Jase’s distressed frown, and knew if he did translate, all hell would break loose.

“Surveillance and security, captain, andcommand-level decision-making equal to the ship, equal to the island. As for Jase’s expertise, and mine, finessewith those who think they’re going to have things their way, to assure that we don’t miscalculate and make a mutually regrettable mistake. I urge you, I strenuously urge you to cooperate with your allies, captain.”

The air was chill, even yet. But a sweat had broken out on Sabin’s face.

“Well, you haven’t persuaded me, Mr. Cameron. And I don’t need your aliens underfoot. So you’re not that good, are you?”

“Captain,” Jase interposed.

“No, no, no,” Bren said. He’d been horrified a moment ago. Now, heart and soul, he stood back from himself, took a sip of his yellow globe, and told himself it wasn’t at all human to be content with what he knew. Or it might be. And that somewhere in Sabin’s mind there was a serious difficulty with their program. “The captain’s quite right. We aren’t able to persuade her that there’s a difference between aliens out there, or people defending their planet. So let me propose that you and the senior captain view the tape together, and determine what’s on it, and then let us reach a reasonable decision.”

“Mr. Cameron,” Sabin said, “let me break some news to you. You don’t control what happens on this ship.”

“A modest proposal,” Bren said. While the sweat increased.

“It’s cold in here,” Sabin said suddenly, distracted. “Is this the temperature your people prefer?”

“It doesn’t seem cold to me,” Bren said. “—Does it to you, Jase?”

Jase threw him a look. It became a stark, a comprehending look. “Face!” Bren said in Ragi. And Jase did what Jase, over years on the planet, had learned to do, and totally dismissed expression.

“Aiji-ma,” Jase protested. “ Bren.”

“Aiji-ma,” Bren said evenly. “Jase-aiji expresses grave concern for this accident. As do we both. And most earnestly assume it isn’t lethal.”

“The tapes,” Ilisidi said. The dreaded cane had been at rest. Now she banged it hard against a table leg. “The tapes, nadiin-ji.”

Sabin attempted to leave her place, to drift free, not quite in control of her limbs. Cajeiri froze in place, young creature in a thicket, as Jase sailed free of his chair to overtake Sabin, to seize her in his arms.

Bren pushed free as well.

“I’ve been poisoned,” Sabin said. “Damn you!”

“Not lethal,” Bren said to Jase in Ragi. He wasn’t that utterly confident, but he said, in ship-speak. “I fear it’s a reaction to something you ate, captain. The sauces. The sauces can be particularly chancy.” Sabin was passing into shivering tremors, angry and incoherent in the chattering of her jaw. “Not generally fatal. It happened to me, once.” On purpose. At the dowager’s table. For just such reasons. “I’m very sorry.”

Sabin reached for her communications unit, but her fingers had trouble with the button.

Jase took it, about to use it himself, but Bren shot out a hand onto Jase’s and prevented that.

“You’re in charge,” he said to Jase in Ragi. “Not likely fatal, nadi, believe me. But you and I and our security are all going up there, to attend her to sickbay.”

“We can’t have done this!”

“Insulting the dowager at her own table? You can’t have done that, either—which I assure you is far more dangerous to the peace than the soup. Disabling the opposition is a moderate response, a limited demonstration, in this case.”

“Demonstration, hell! Not likely fatal. You don’t know that. She’s not young. She could die.”

“Then stop talking and let’s get her up there to the medics.”

“Your agents going all over the ship—” Jase tried for composure, and Sabin had by now fallen into a tremulous semi-consciousness. “Damn you,” Jase said hoarsely. “Damn you, Bren. I trusted you.”

“You cantrust me,” Bren said. “Move. Fluids are going to be a very good idea, very soon now.”

They were floating mostly above the dining-table. Ilisidi had drifted up, dislodging a stray drink-globe, formidable cane in hand. Cajeiri followed, very, very cautiously, eyes completely wide.

Somehow, meanwhile, Cenedi had arrived from the serving-room, the back way—Cenedi, and then Banichi, together: a number usually unfortunate, but it was a pacifying unity here, with lords at loggerheads.

Perhaps even a human returned to ship-loyalties could feel that shift in the odds.

“She isn’tTamun,” Jase said. “She pulled back from the coup.”

“That’s all very well. You changed the agreements, youwanted us confined to quarters, youstarted imposing conditions on the atevi representation on this mission, conditions I’m not sure would be quite as extreme on our still-to-board humandelegates—”

“That’s your suspicion, Bren.”

“I’m afraid it is. But the odds have shifted. You know what’s at stake. She’s not dead. She’s in reach of medical care you’re keeping her from, nadi, and I’d suggest we get moving right now, no conditions, no maneuvers on your side. Let’s see she stays alive, nadi, before we have the association blow up in our faces.”

“All right,” Jase said in ship-speak. “All right.”

“One recommends fluids,” the dowager said, “a great deal of fluids, very soon. A blanket, for wrapping. Quickly now.”

Servants moved.

“We shall visit our guest,” Ilisidi declared. “We are of course distressed.”

“Let’s go,” Bren said. “Your security’s outside. Calm them. I’ll go with you. We won’t let this break wide open, Jase.”

“You’re not taking this ship.” This, in ship-speak.

“I earnestly hope not.” And in Ragi: “We’re sitting here at dock, we haven’t gone anywhere, and I’m not letting you pull this ship out of dock with the dowager and Tabini’s son aboard until we have some kind of cooperation and until the dowager is satisfied. Atevi act for their own interests, and it’s their planet, their sunlight you’ve been borrowing. If you want admission, Jase Graham, negotiate, because the way Sabin-aiji’s gone at it is shaping up to a disaster.”

The servant had come back with a wrap, a wonderfully hand-worked piece, no common woven sheet; and very tenderly that young man helped Jase wrap the shivering captain in its tightly confining embrace—far easier on the captain, far more comforting than a hand-grip. “Get the light out of her eyes,” Bren said, tucking a fold across Sabin’s brow. His own gut recalled the misery, and he had every sympathy for what Sabin was about to endure. “Captain. We’re getting you upstairs. Do you hear me? Hang on. This was surely an accident, an unfortunate accident.”

With Jase he moved Sabin toward the door. Jago was outside. So were Kaplan and Pressman, and so was Collins, Sabin’s man, with his team.

“The captain’s reacted to something at dinner,” Jase said. “Mr. Kaplan, alert the infirmary.”

The dowager followed, with Cajeiri trailing close, the very image of the concerned host, servants adding a cloak to the dowager’s formal attire.

“You’ll stay here,” Collins said to them, as if Jase were one of the passengers.

That, Bren thought, was a tactical mistake.

“Mister,” Jase said, “they’re going where I say they’re going. That’s up to the infirmary, where we can pass information to the medics.”

“Cenedi-ji,” Ilisidi said. “Have the area secure.”

They moved. Cenedi and four men attended the dowager and Cajeiri. “Banichi-ji,” Bren said, intent on going with them, and Banichi and Jago opted to leave security to Cenedi’s men.

That added up to nine atevi, seven of them very large indeed—a boy and the dowager, and a handful of worried human security, with Jase and Sabin—Sabin being still conscious, but quite, quite beyond coherent expression.

They reached the lift together. “Second deck, Mr. Kaplan,” Jase said, and Kaplan punched it in, Sabin’s security crowded in with them so that there was very little space left at all.

The lift shot up, opened its door onto pervisible walls and a waiting escort in blue and white, medics who received the captain in greatest haste and concern and wanted to eject them all back into the lift in the process.

“The dowager expresses great concern for the captain’s welfare and will attend,” Bren said. “Such incidents happen with native diet—rare, but they do happen. Her staff has a pharmacopeia of remedies.”

“We have our own expertise,” the chief medic said. “Captain.”

“The dowager does know what was administered,” Jase said, with no trace of irony or anger about it. “Mr. Cameron can translate.—What will you recommend, nand’ dowager?”

“A purgative,” Ilisidi said. “A strong purgative. The body will continue to throw it off in every possible way, and administration of fluids will be very helpful.”

Bren translated. “Purge the system. Get her to a small, dark room. I’ve suffered a similar situation. Fluids will help the headache. I assure you there will be headache. Severe headache.”

For the next several days. He didn’t mention that. Sabin would want to kill them by degrees. And wouldn’t want to see bright lights or raise her head above horizontal—however that worked in zero-g.

“ This is Captain Graham.” Jase’s voice came over the general address, and from Jase, in stereo, via C1’s offices, Bren had no doubt. “ Captain Sabin has had a food reaction, and is recovering in sickbay, full recovery expected. We’re close to shift-change. It’s become my watch, and first-shift may stand down as relief arrives. Second-shift, report to duty immediately.”

Sabin began to try to speak when she heard that, and was, predictably, suffering nausea. Medics, atevi security and human, moved to assist. In zero-g, it was not a happy situation.

“ Atevi personnel will move about freely during crew and passenger boarding,” Jase continued on the intercom. “ Report any question to me via C1.”

A hovering grandmother, a vitally important child with security attendant, a handworked and expensive cloth—none of these were the ship’s image of a coup, Bren hoped. It would hardly be the image of such an event in Shejidan, if one didn’t intimately know the chief participant.

They’d rescued the precious throw and substituted infirmary disposables. And Sabin was both semi-conscious and miserable.

“We shall stay personally and assure ourselves that the captain is well, nadiin-ji,” Ilisidi said. “We have antidotes, which I have ordered be at hand during any dinner.”

“Aiji-ma, in case there should be any fatal outcome, one would hardly wish to have supplied a drug—”

“Translate!” Ilisidi said. Bren translated, and subsequently accepted a vial from one of Ilisidi’s young men.

“This may be of use,” Bren added, passing it to a medical officer, hoping to very heaven it might not be a fatal dose. “To be taken by mouth.” He knew this one. “The dowager’s medic provides it, out of years of experience with such accidents. It should be minor, except the headache. These are complex substances. I advise taking this remedy.”

“It should be safe.” Jase said at his shoulder, and in Ragi. “Stay here, Bren-ji, and keep matters quiet. Don’t have it look worse than it is. I’m going to the bridge.”

“There will be time to discuss,” Ilisidi said, silk and steel, with a tender smile, “ship-aiji.”

Jase didn’t say a thing. Ship-aiji. She’d just made him that, in very fact.

Ogun hadn’t necessarily wanted Jase here. Now he was. Now he was in charge, with power to abort or delay the mission. Ogun hadn’t necessarily wanted Sabin in charge of the mission, either—hadn’t liked her, and possibly hadn’t trusted her associations, to put it in Ragi.

Possibly far too many of his thoughts came in Ragi these days; but he believed in what he saw. He believed that, all evidence accounted, Sabin was a potential asset, only a potential one, and that things trembled on the brink of very bad mistakes.

He saw Jase board the lift, taking Sabin’s men out with him, leaving Kaplan.

Very bad mistakes. Which couldn’t be allowed to happen. He intended to go inside the treatment room, but Ilisidi and her escort came, and they crowded into the room to the evident distress of the medics.

“There’s limited room here,” the chief medic said angrily. “Sir, if you’ll persuade them outside…”

“This is ‘Sidi-ji.” The crew knew the dowager, knew her manner—and respected her. “I doubt I can. We’re here to see the antidote given. She feels personally responsible, and it’s a matter of honor.”

“We’ve no intention of giving the captain another unidentified alien substance…”

“You’re the aliens, sir, by way of precise accuracy, and I do urge the dowager has a far more exact knowledge of native chemistry. This is a medication I’ve had, and if I didn’t think it would ease the symptoms I’d never urge it.—Captain? You’re offered an antidote. I’ll vouch for it, on my personal honor. I’ve had such an incident myself.”

Sabin was just conscious enough, and she’d had it on far more alcohol and a far better cushion of previous dishes: the one might accelerate, the other cushion the effects of the substance, and for all his assurances to the doctors, Ilisidi hadn’thad that extended an experience at poisoning humans.

“At this point,” Sabin said, teeth chattering, eyes clenched rapidly after one second’s attempt to look him in the eye, “at this point, hell, it can’t be worse.”

It could.

“Captain,” the doctor said.

“I said it can’t be worse!” Shouting was not a good idea. Not at all a good idea.

“Just let her drink it,” Bren said. “Hang onto it as long as possible, captain.” Sabin’s heaving stomach knew exactly what he meant.

“Give it,” Sabin said.

Clearly the medics weren’t in favor of native medicines. But one uncapped the vial and offered it, stoppered with a gloved thumb.

Sabin sucked the black liquid down between shivers.

“I don’t know whether it would help or hurt to get gravity aboard,” Bren said. “At least dim the lights in here.”

“Listen to him!” Sabin said. “He’s the only one who knows anything!”

The headache had hit. It was probably a good thing. They were pumping fluids in via a tube.

The attendance of atevi had taken position not just in the corner, but stacked rather as if seated in a theater, a black and brocade wall of watchers, Banichi and Jago among the foremost, Cajeiri’s solemn young eyes staring amazedly at the goings-on.

Things settled. Sabin drifted with her eyes shut, medics monitoring, making notations, conferring in low voices among themselves. Bren watched, having learned in his mother’s crises and in a precarious lifetime somewhat to interpret what he heard, which at least indicated to him that vital signs were solid. Sabin’s pulse was racing—he remembered that effect—but not badly so. It went right along with the headache, which by Sabin’s determined, jaw-clenched quiet was indeed what Sabin was feeling.

“Poisoned,” Sabin said during one of her moments of lucidity. “Damn, I knew it.”

“Yet you came to dinner,” Bren said, from his vantage near the troubled medics. “You were willing to risk it. And it may have happened completely inadvertently.” He much doubted that. “The dowager is here, captain. She is concerned for your welfare, and at this moment you might ask her for high favors, to make amends. She is, I’m sure, very willing to make amends… to make peace.”

“Brooks.” Sabin turned her head to appeal to the chief medic, a movement which brought nausea. She made a grab for a suction bag, and nausea replaced thought for a moment.

Bren felt pangs of his own—the memory of that illness didn’t go away.

“Damn you,” Sabin said behind the bag, face averted.

“Yes, captain,” Bren said. “Damn me as you like. But I’m very sure you’d walk through fire to an objective. I suggest this is the fire, and there is an overwhelmingly important objective to be won. I came to a like conclusion once. I suggest you very well know what that objective is: their respect and their cooperation… and that you’ve been tested. Favorably tested, I might add. Do you want the objective? Do you want their cooperation, unmediated by me or by anyone else?”

Sabin beat the nausea, dismissed the attending medic, put up a hand that trailed tubing and wiped sweat from her face. A medic started to dry it with a cloth, and she batted it away.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. “ Don’t anybody touch me.” She added a string of profanities, and breathed heavily for a moment. Bren knew. Bren utterly knew, inside and out, the war going on in Sabin’s gut, and in Sabin’s very intelligent brain.

Sabin—slowly, this time—turned her head in Bren’s direction, not without a sideward glance toward the towering mass of atevi. Sabin’s eyes watered tears that stood in globules and blinked into small beads on her lashes. It was physiological reaction, not weakness, not—Bren was quite sure—abject fear, no fear of man, atevi, or the devil.

“Damn you,” Sabin said. “You’re in ourship, and you’re alive on our tolerance.”

“Captain,” Bren said, “you’re wanting supplies from ourstation and ourplanet.”

“Your planet,” Sabin scoffed. “You’re human. Or were. Or ought to be.”

“I am. And I still say my planet, my people, my government and my leaders. We’re not your colonists any more. And through your character, your skills, your actions over a lengthy acquaintance, you’ve won the planet’s agreement, not only in this, but in everything you could want. Everything you came to the dowager’s quarters to get, you’ve gotten—if you’re not such a fool as to let a cultural misunderstanding blow up the deal.” He knew Sabin’s temper—that it was extreme—but always under control. And he’d been on the station long enough to know two more things about Sabin, first that the crew’s dislike of her did get under her skin, and that she did make occasional efforts at humanity—and second, that there was a requisite level of honesty and bluntness in dealing with her. Do her credit, truth was one of her virtues. “My apologies, captain, my personal and profound apologies for what you’re going through at the moment. To this moment I don’t know if it was intentional. Atevi custom can be arcane. But the dowager’s attendance here—” He gestured with a glance toward the dark wall of atevi. “—Her attendance on you is an extreme statement. She’s saying she views you favorably. She respects you. She respects your strength.” Ego repair seemed in order, and there were qualities he knew Sabin respected. “Because you haven’t buckled, captain, thereforeshe’ll be able to cooperate with you, the same way she cooperates with the Mospheiran president and the aiji himself. There arevery few authorities that she remotely respects. There’s only one authority on earth she halfway abides, but she allows a very few equals. Thereforeyou were at her table; therefore she sat through—let me very bluntly refresh your memory, captain—your pushing her very, very hard to see what she’d do. And you know you did that. You meant to do it. You wanted to provoke her to push back. Well, now you’ve both proved something. So can we get beyond that, if you please, and walk through that fire, and get to what both sides really want out of this voyage?”

Sabin had been lucid, and listened to him, her mouth set to a thin line. She wasn’t ready to speak, but she was holding on to arguments as they sailed past her doubtless aching brain.

“I’m mobile,” she said, “as long as we’re in zero-g. I’ve got my tubes. Everything floats. Give me a headache-killer. Damnyou and your schemes, Mr. Cameron, and damn your atevi friends. I’m going to the bridge. Graham isn’tin charge.”

“Yes, captain.” The chief medic made a move to bundle the tubes and the fluid-delivery apparatus—wrapped them together in plastic and tucked them toward Sabin, still pumping their stabilizing content.

“Sabin declares she will go to the bridge, nadiin-ji,” Bren said in Ragi, knowing what he was throwing into motion—and avoiding names. “She is challenging. Advise the bridge.”

Sabin looked at him, quietly rotating toward level, toward that eye contact that human beings wanted with each other, that contact of souls, and it was a blistering, burning contact—momentary, as Sabin sought, with the help of others, to leave.

There was nothing he could do. Absolutely nothing. Jase might try to prove she was out of her head and seize command by virtue of the senior captain’s incapacity, but treatment and sheer dogged determination was overcoming the substance in Sabin’s bloodstream, and she was going to get to the lift, and she was going to challenge Jase, and call on her own bodyguard in the situation… Jase’s bodyguard all being here.

That, he could help.

“Mr. Kaplan,” Bren said. “Assist the captain.”

Kaplan looked at him, Kaplan with doubtless the same desperate set of thoughts going on behind that distressed expression, Kaplan knowing he shouldn’tbe taking orders from an outsider, in support of a captain hostile to his captain. But there was a level of trust between them, of long standing, and Kaplan did move, and the rest of the human escort did, willing to assist Sabin… least of several evils. Kaplan himself offered a hand to assist Sabin’s movement.

And an alarm siren went off through the ship.

And stopped.

“ This is Captain Graham. The Mospheirans are now aboard. We’re going to release the hookups and stand off, preparatory to spin-up. Take hold. Take immediate precautions.”

Jase repeated the same advisement in Ragi and Sabin fumbled after her communications unit, struggling for composure. “C1! Captain Graham is notin charge. Put this to general address! Captain Graham is not in charge. First shift take stations.”

Humans in the medical facility stood as if paralyzed.

It didn’t come over the general address. Sabin’s advisement hadn’t gone out.

C1, on a decision C1 probably hadn’t made alone, hadn’tcooperated.

The motion warning sounded, staccato bursts, warning anyone who’d ever studied the emergency procedures not to be moving from secure places. The warning went on for over a minute, and medical personnel scrambled, securing loose lines, bits of equipment, checking latches.

The warning stopped.

Almost immediately a crash resounded through the ship frame.

Lights dimmed and came up bright again.

“ We have released,” Jase’s voice said. “ Stand by.”

As if Sabin hadn’t said anything. Lights on the intercom panel strobed yellow: caution, caution, take care.

Medics moved to take Sabin. Atevi shifted position. Bren grabbed a safety-rail, heart pounding.

“ Damn you,” Sabin shouted.

The world moved, slowly, subtly, the same feeling as the shuttle had. Strange, Bren thought. Strange that something so massive as Phoenixcould move like that, just so softly.

“ This is Captain Ogun,” the intercom said, “ speaking from station offices, wishing you a safe voyage and a safe return. Our hearts go with you. Be assured that the cooperation of world and station will continue, preserving and building a safe home base for this ship and others. We have been very fortunate in our welcome here.”

“ Stand by,” the intercom said then, this time in Jase’s voice.

Muscles tensed. Medics cradled their unwilling charge.

“ Have no doubts,” the intercom said, again in Ogun’s voice, “ of our faithful keeping of this port. We will keep you in mind until you’re safely home, with, we hope, all our missing crew, and all our citizens.”

Recorded message, Bren thought desperately. God, it was going bad. Sabin was never going to forgive the dowager, or Jase, who he was sure had just played a departure message out of context.

Sabin damned sure wouldn’t forgive him, once Sabin knew the truth.

But Sabin, hazed and hurting, didn’t fight any longer. She’d made a valiant effort, a heroic effort. Bren knew, in his own gut, what it cost, and wondered at an old woman’s stamina and will… even to contemplate traveling up to the bridge in her condition. Gravity was the trump card, gravity, that pulled bodies down to decks and reasserted ordinary capacities. Sabin couldn’t make it—couldn’t reach the lift. Couldn’t stand, or walk. And knew it.

Motion started. A bulkhead came toward their backs at glacial speed, so, so slowly, while at the same time bodies and objects moved as slowly toward the deck. Small loose items simply drifted across the room, a bundle of tubing, a handful of tissues, a towel, and Bren felt the bulkhead against his shoulder as he felt his feet contacting the deck.

Sabin went rackingly sick. The medics contained the situation, and there went the delicate chemical balance, both positive and negative. She could not hold herself on her feet, that was the plain fact, as objects slowly acquired weight to go with their momentum. The pressure of feet against the floor equaled and then exceeded that against the bulkhead.

The bulkhead pressure stopped. There was a very queasy moment, and then Bren became aware he was standing as he would on the station, with the ship drifting inertial.

And themselves sideways on the inside of a torus. There were things the mind didn’t want to know or reckon with.

Sabin was convulsively ill, and the medics, protective of her, saw a cot let down and Sabin bundled into it.

“Mr. Cameron,” the chief doctor said, “I’ll ask you to take this occupation force out into the corridor. Captain’s orders.”

“No, sir,” Bren said quietly. He had a dozen arguments, but only one matching Sabin’s order: “We’re here at the sitting captain’sorders, and we feel we should regard that instruction until Captain Sabin’s recovered.”

The doctor wasn’t happy. “Watch them,” the doctor instructed a subordinate, “and don’t let them touch her. Don’t let them touch anything.”

Oh, what a happy situation.

But there they sat. Or stood.

They could all end up under arrest, once the matter shook out—God forbid Sabin should die, though that would solve certain things at a stroke, and it could happen very, very fast if Ilisidi so much as flicked a finger. Bren walked over to her, bowed, and explained quickly, in a low voice.

“Aiji-ma, Sabin-aiji is furious and takes it that she was poisoned, on which I have not been so forward as to claim any knowledge…”

Ilisidi smiled—was it a smile?—and rested a hand on Cajeiri’s shoulder. “She is alive and quite well. It was a very small dose. But we will notbe constrained in movement or access, and that you may tell her.”

There was an arrival at that point. Ginny Kroger walked in, with a handful of the station’s security guards, and the room… already crowded… became very crowded indeed.

“Bren,” Ginny said, and gave a little bow toward the dowager. “Dowager.” She said it in Ragi, a courtesy. Only a few years ago nohuman but the paidhi ever addressed an ateva, and it had become gingerly matter-of-course that one shoulddo so. “We understand there’s been a little question of our freedom to move about. We also understand the captain’s taken ill. We’re here. At your service.”

Ginny, of all people. Bren’s heart gave a thump; and he had to ask what the hell was going on.

Jase, he thought then. Jase, on the bridge, with freedom of communications.

“I’d like to keep this civil,” he murmured, trying to keep it out of Sabin’s drugged hearing. “The captain pushed the dowager, hard. We’ve had a bit of a blow-up and the dowager’s willing to have it be settled, tit for tat. Given the freedom from restriction. That’s how things are.”

“Mr. Cameron.” The doctor was irate. “I’ll thank you to take this mob out.”

“We can move the captain to the dowager’s quarters, where we can care for her,” Bren said… not having consulted in the least, but he took a chance, high and wide. “We feel, given the nature of the reaction, that we ought to remain a resource for her… and we take our commitment to Captain Graham very seriously. We willremove her from the premises if we feel she’s in danger, damned right we will.”

“Get out of here.”

“You can’t enforce it,” Bren said. “Nor should. This is international politicsyou’re taking a wrench to, sir, and mypatient is the agreement that pastes three species together and keeps your ship operational. In that capacity, I’m supported by two of your captains and both the planet’s nations. And I’m not budging.”

“Cameron.”

That was from Sabin. He paid attention, and walked cautiously over to the bed.

“You damn bastard,” Sabin said.

“Yes, ma’am. I am and please attribute the misunderstandings to me, with profound personal apologies. I know the dowager’s limited in her conversation with you, but she’d much rather have an agreement and a civilized understanding. Her presence here is both an honor to you and an expression of her wish to have an agreement.”

Sabin’s scowling face was pale and beaded with sweat.

“You think I’m tracking?”

“I think you’re hearing things, and they come and they go, rather like talking down a pipe. Am I right? But I think you know the essentials. I think you know you can have a voyage with allies—or maybe that voyage shouldn’t take place at all. If we can’t bring the peace we’ve reached—out there—then what are we bringing, captain? If the representatives of the world and the station have to be locked belowdecks and kept out of decisions, we’re not bringing them damned much hope.”

“Who are you going to poison next? The pilot? That will be useful.”

“Captain, here’s a simple question. Did you back Pratap Tamun in an attempt to get information out of Ramirez? Was that where it went wrong?”

“What in hell are you talking about?”

“That is a fairly reasonable suspicion, isn’t it? You nominated Tamun. You generally supported him. Tamun wanted information on conditions at the station, because he was suspicious there was something withheld, and Ramirez wouldn’t give it to him. If he’d had what Ramirez knew, he could have brought the whole crew in on the mutiny—but he didn’t have it. And if hedidn’t have it, maybe you didn’t have it. Now every eyewitness but one is dead. And you just appropriated him to your staff.”

Sabin blinked slowly, sweat beaded in the lines about her eyes. The expression was somewhat bewildered. It might be she’d lost the threads of the question. It might be bewilderment of a different sort.

“Jenrette?”

“All the others died in the coup. So there’s Jenrette. And you wanted him away from Jase. And we know it.”

A slow series of blinks. Sabin’s face wasn’t accustomed to bewilderment. The map of lines was better suited to frowns.

“Damn this headache.” She seemed then to lose the pieces. And grope after them. “You’ve built a fairy castle, Mr. Cameron. And poisoned me because of it?”

“Only incidentally because of it, because if I’d believed you were on the side of the angels, or if you’d understood my position, Captain Sabin, you and I might have talked and the level of tension on this ship wouldn’t have prompted you to restrict the dowager’s movements and insult her at her own dinner table.”

“You were the translator, Mr. Cameron.”

“I can’t ameliorate body language, Captain Sabin.”

“You… and Jase Graham. Damn him.”

“Damn us both, captain. Let’s be fair. Didyou know about the situation on Reunion?”

Sabin’s hand wandered to her head, shaded her eyes a moment, shutting him out.

Then dropped.

“Where’s Jules Ogun? Does your coup extend to the station?”

“Call him. I’m sure Jase can patch you through. What’s on the station is what we agreed on, a cooperative power-sharing, Captain Ogun, Lord Geigi, and Mr. Paulson. And considering everything that’s gone on, I’m not sure we’re not all going back aboard the station.”

“Things onstation are what they were.” Ginny moved to the foot of Sabin’s cot.

“Who’s that?” Focusing clearly hurt.

“Ginny Kroger, captain. Our deep concern for what’s happening here. This isn’t the way we wanted to start the voyage.”

“Not what I planned, either,” Sabin muttered.

“So things onstation are secure,” Bren said. “And we can bring the ship back in to dock and try to settle this—you, your crew, the station… everybody. It does admit a certain failure on our part. Maybe we can avoid that.”

Sabin shut her eyes. There was a lengthy silence. Bren looked at Ginny.

“She’s pretty damn sick,” he said. “She’ll be all right, but she’s in no shape to make decisions right now. I don’t think this ship should leave port right now. We’ve been lied to, by Ramirez or by the whole Captain’s Council. We know there are records we weren’t given. We know there’s been deception on deception—whether it’s the old Guild running this show or not, no one’s sure.”

“Guild, hell,” Sabin muttered, eyes still shut. “We never were sure. Just put a brake on it, Cameron. Don’t speculate.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and folded his hands and stopped where he was, listening, waiting while a very sick woman tried to gather her faculties.

“First off, tell the dowager she’s a right damn bastard.”

It was no time for a translator to argue. Mitigation, however, was a reasonable tactic. “Aiji-ma, Sabin-aiji has heard our suspicions regarding Tamun and received assurances from me and Gin-aiji that we have not arranged a coup of our own. She addresses you with an untranslatable term sometimes meaning extreme disrepute, sometimes indicating respect for an opponent.”

Ilisidi’s mouth drew down in wicked satisfaction. “Return the compliment, paidhi.”

“Captain, she says you’re a right damn bastard, too.”

Sabin almost laughed, winced, and grabbed her head with a hand that shook like palsy. “God.”

“Hurts. I know. I’m sorry.”

“Damn your ‘sorry.’ Tell the dowager she can wander all over the deck and into the reaction chamber for all I care. What’s Graham up to, up there right now? Going through files?”

“I think he might be asking questions.”

“Of Jenrette.”

“Among other actions. I know for a fact, captain, that he’d shoot me before he’d take an action that endangered this ship. Let’s lay suspicions out in plain sight. He lived onworld with us for a number of years, he understands us, and his understandingof us has led him to do what he’s done. Frankly, he in no way anticipated what happened at the aiji’s table. He rather planned to invade the files by subterfuge and try to find out the truth without embarrassing you. And maybe just to ask Jenrette some direct questions… if youdidn’t assassinate Jenrette.”

Blink.

“People havebeen assassinated in this affair,” Bren said. “Not least of our suspicions—Ramirez.”

Blink-blink. “Not unless you did it.”

“You suspected us? We suspected you.”

“Did you do it?”

“No. I investigated, and my staff investigated. No.”

“That’s constructive.” Pain made Sabin shield her eyes and breathe heavily for a moment. “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Cameron. Let’s just assume this voyage is going to take place. Let’s assume we can even proceed on schedule. I’m not looking forward to acceleration until this headache stops, but we all have our inconveniences. Did you tell the dowager she’s a bitch?”

“Bastard, ma’am, and she called you one.”

“Good. We understand each other. How long does this headache last?”

“A few days. I hope less, with human-specific medication, all the facilities here…”

“Days.” Sabin winced.

“There are a few native antidotes… at least things that help. But I think the medical staff can do more for you than…”

“Hell. Tell Graham get this ragtag settled into cabins, secure the ship and get the pilot on advisement. Tell Graham I’ll see him when he’s got a moment and don’t push any buttons up there.”

“Captain Sabin.” He was, on the one hand, amazed. On the other—still suspicious. Years in Shejidan had all his nerves atwitch. And gave him the sure instinct to take what the captain offered and look it over very, very carefully. “I’ll certainly pass that message. But we waited all this time. Your comfort—”

“Is not an issue, Mr. Cameron.” Incredibly, she lifted her head and struggled up on an elbow. Bren put out his hands to catch her, knowing at gut level the giddy spin that effort created. But she stayed tremulously steady. “Get the hell out of here and tell Graham move the ship. Now, hear me?”

She sank back. A medic crowded in to check the tubes and the vitals.

“Aiji-ma,” Bren said, “she accepts explanations and orders the mission to proceed. She wishes us to go to quarters and leave Jase-aiji in charge of the ship’s operations.” He said it, and his Shejidan-experienced mind urged caution. “One might, however, provide atevi security.”

Ilisidi’s eyes sparkled. “Here, and with Jase-aiji.”

“One concurs.”

It was a peculiar difference dealing with humans, that one understood there was the possibility of an association with Sabin—and yet, among atevi, there would be an aiji ultimately in charge of that association. Where in all reason did they find someone to be in charge of this one, since neither Ilisidi nor Sabin admitted an overlord?

One had the thoroughly uncomfortable notion that the paidhiin glued it all together, and that Sabin didn’t forgive what Ilisidi had done, and Ilisidi didn’t forgive the insults at her table, and they had Cajeiri looking nervously from one participant to the other in an atevi child’s honest bewilderment. His instincts surely said this shouldn’t work and adults surely weren’t telling the truth.

But that was the whole problem with the atevi/human interface, and that was the problem with educating children of both species to get along without touching one another’s aggressive instincts. And that was the problem of a ship-culture that had a strong feeling of usand themand went armed to the teeth. Letting atevi under the ship’s armor was a hard, hard thing to do.

And just as well, if they had current ability to move about, that they move into the most sensitive areas and make the point they could do so without harm.

“The dowager wishes you a speedy recovery,” Bren said to Sabin, saying nothing about the movement of atevi personnel. “She accepts.”

“The captain of this ship wishes her in hell,” Sabin said dourly, holding a hand over her eyes, and the chief translator foresaw a very, very difficult duty on this ship. “Get me communication with the bridge. Not you. Kaplan.”

Kaplan threw a glance at Bren. Bren tried simultaneously to say go ahead and to look as if he wasn’t anywhere in the loop.

“Good you’re here,” Bren said to Ginny with a touch on the arm. “Want to drop by my quarters when you’re settled? Bring yourself up to speed?”

“That’s in the atevi section.”

“Atevi, Mospheiran… we’re all deck five. It’s going to be close quarters. We’re going to need to secure for motion, imminently, I think. When it’s stopped—when we’re inertial again—” He struggled to revise his earthbound thinking. “Drop by for drinks. Or I’ll come to you. I’ll present you to the dowager.”

“Deal,” Ginny said, and turned and took her own escort out of the crowded compartment. The dowager signaled her intention to depart.

Sabin was talking to someone, presumably Jase, on her personal com, hand over her eyes, wincing.

It seemed time to depart. Bren joined the atevi contingent on the way out.

“One will remain on watch, nandi,” Jago said as they rubbed elbows in the doorway—feet on the deck, the whole world restored to ordinary.

Jago meant that shetook this post, here, by the infirmary… logical choice. She would stand here claiming not to know a word of human language, in which she had a fair fluency.

There had been quiet words passed among atevi all the while he’d been talking to Jase and Sabin: bet that there’d been communications traffic and agents spread out through the ship, all of whom now formed an atevi network of presence. There always was, when an atevi lord moved into an area.

And Jase himself was an atevi interest. Absolutely he was under the dowager’s guard, seen or unseen.

“One agrees, Jago-ji.”

Banichi stayed with him. Jago stayed behind.

They reached the lift and rode it toward five-deck with the dowager’s entire party, and with Ginny Kroger and her crew. No one spoke. The dowager leaned on her cane with both hands, vastly content.

They reached fifth deck.

The door opened.

“ Bren-nadi.” The intercom in the lift-car, right in his face, scared him.

“Jase-ji?”

“ Will you mind coming up here?”

He drew a deep breath.

It wasn’t over.

The dowager meanwhile had left the car, with young Cajeiri. Ginny Kroger and her crew debarked. Cenedi held the door open.

“I’m requested to come to the bridge, aiji-ma,” Bren said.

“Escort him,” Ilisidi said, and Cenedi with a rapid gesture detached two men.

Two. Infelicity. Unless one counted Jase.

“Need help?” Ginny asked, from outside the doors.

“No. Questions from Jase, likely. I’ll give you a report.—Aiji-ma.” One owed last, parting courtesies to the highest rank present. “I’ll report.”

“Go,” Ilisidi said. The pair of men got in. Cenedi got out.

The door shut.

“Do you know what this regards, Bren-ji?” Banichi asked him.

“One isn’t sure,” he said. His mind conjured a dozen scenarios, most disastrous—even the bridge being held at gunpoint by Sabin loyalists. “I don’t thinkit’s a trap, nadi-ji. I think it’s Jase.”

Chapter 18

There was indeed an atevi presence on the bridge when the lift let them out—two men, felicitous three, counting Jase, the object of their protection: a better counter, perhaps, could have predicted it, with their infelicitous four.

Exceedingly fortunate seven. One wasn’t inclined to count the number of humans on the bridge, technicians and operations chiefs, and security… but Bren did. They were outnumbered, if not outgunned.

Jase stood amid the rows of consoles, reserved, serene, among crew at work. And spared him a glance.

“All quiet?” Bren asked in ship-speak, precisely because there wereeavesdroppers.

“Quiet here,” Jase said. “How is Captain Sabin?”

“Strong-minded.”

Jase quirked an eyebrow.

“In favor of the mission,” Bren amended that. “Anxious to see it underway.”

“We have section chiefs going through the corridors now, final check on stowage.”

“It’s the pilot that does this, isn’t it? All the technicals. I’ll assume things will work.”

“They’ll work,” Jase said. And shot him a less cheerful look. “Clear operations with me or with Captain Sabin. No installations we don’t know about. And where I don’t know the risks, I’ll have one of the technical staff pass on it.”

“Understood. We remember how humans got to this star in the first place. We’ve no desire to foul up navigation.”

“You understand. I want to be sure your staff does. I want to be sure the dowagerunderstands us.”

“I’ll attend to that.”

“Do.—Banichi-ji.”

“Nandi.”

“There’s hazard in moving about the corridors. Understand that, nadi-ji.”

“One understands, nandi.”

“There may be hard feelings. And suspicion, nadi. Very deep suspicion.”

“There’s something about being that sick, among strangers,” Bren said in Ragi, “that makes one re-evaluate the world.”

“I don’t count on it,” Jase said bluntly. And in ship-speak: “Mr. Hammond, take over while I make sure our guests reach five-deck.”

Not the deepest cover they could imagine, but Jase put a hand on Bren’s back and walked him to the lift, his bodyguard attending.

Jase punched five, inside. The doors shut between them and the bridge. The lift started into motion.

“Tell me this one,” Jase said. “Did you know?”

“I didn’t. I honestly didn’t. I don’t think it was sure until it went difficult at the table.”

“Dammit, Bren.”

“Dammit, indeed. But she and the dowager exchanged frank words. Very frank words. There may be communication.”

“We’re going out there in the deep dark with no agreement. With everything in flux.”

“Not wholly our doing. This limiting the dowager to fifth deck. This niggling away at the agreements started long before the dowager even came up to the station.” The lift reached bottom. The door opened. They couldn’t delay in conversation without provoking human suspicions. “You know Ramirez expanded agreements: you know he expanded them and you know he pushed, and you know the danger in that. He pushed Tabini into haste, and when he died, damned right we had an emergency. We had a council of captains without a useful clue attempting to change pace on the course we’d been following breakneck for years, all on human promises—”

“It doesn’t give you leave—”

“Not excluding Sabin all along being outvoted by the Ramirez-Ogun combination and Ramirez putting youin. That’s going to be with us. No, I don’t trust her, Jase-nadi. I don’t see a woman who’s open to strangeness, not now, not yet. I see a woman who shouldn’t be in charge of foreign contact, and yet that’s where she’s ended, and you and I know we’re in trouble.”

“This is our household,” Jase said in a shaken voice. “Do you get that, Bren? I’m willing to take an office I don’t want and try to make things work in non-technicals, in the things I cando. And hereafter—I may speak the language, but man’chi is to the ship.”

“You know how to sit in a two-species meeting and get out of it with a civilized agreement. That’s the point, Jase. That’s the very point.”

“We can’t have another incident like this.”

“I expect the dowager will invite Sabin back to dinner.”

“I expect Sabin will invite the dowager first.”

That, in fact, seemed very likely. “We’re going to have our hands full, Jase-paidhi.”

“I’ll get that tape,” Jase said, and reached for the lift control panel. “Out. Takehold’s going in effect in short order. I’ve got to drop by and talk to Sabin.”

“Luck,” he said, and got out, with his escort. Cenedi had a man on watch by the lift—a precaution. “Understand—no more restriction of our movements.”

“None,” Jase said. “Not on my watch.”

The door shut. The lift departed.

Bren cast a glance to the borrowed escort. “They stand ready to move the ship, nadiin. I send you to the dowager, with thanks.—Banichi.”

Banichi walked with him. The escort walked behind.

“Jago should come back down, to ride through this with us,” Bren said. Maybe it wasn’t wise, but things were about to change on a large scale. They were about to do something his gut insisted was dangerous—even if it was only getting up to speed, to clear the vicinity of the only world he’d known—and he wanted all the people he cherished safe and taken care of.

“I’ll pass that order,” Banichi said.

“Sabin should be safe. Her own people will see to her.”

“One hopes, Bren-ji.”

They walked down the curve of the corridor, past the dowager’s guarded door—two men there; and that place absorbed their escort.

They reached that area of hall that was the paidhi’s establishment—his own quarters. Doors were all shut.

Banichi spoke to Narani on his personal communications, and the door very quickly whisked open on a room vastly changed since the explosion of baggage.

There was order. There was his bed, freed of baggage, lid own, sparklingly modern.

It wasn’t Mospheira, it wasn’t Shejidan: it was modern, it was stark, spartan, and scary. He almost wished for the clutter, he very much wished for the halls of the Bu-javid, those halls where every carpet was hand-worked, antique, convolute in design; where draperies had one pattern and half a dozen vases of carefully selected flowers had another.

But there, right above his desk, in strong light, hung three globes—like Ilisidi’s banquet globes, transparent, and containing green leaves—growing leaves, he discovered, and then recognized them. Fortunate three. Living plants.

Bindanda had had a hand in this, he was quite sure. Had he not given Bindanda Sandra Johnson’s cuttings to establish?

And here they were, green, growing, an oasis, Bindanda’s little secret. He’d entirely forgotten. Some sort of medium, a hole to let the vines trail out—there being only a leaf-tip at the moment.

He’d never suspected Tatiseigi’s spy of such kind sentiment. “Bindanda offers these,” Narani said. “They’re just rooted. Would you care for tea before the ship moves, paidhi-ji?”

There were atevi established here. Of course, silly thought, be very sure there was tea, it was hot, and it could just be delivered before the warning siren.

He sat in the reclining chair, sipped his tea in a disposable cup while staff hurried about.

Jago appeared, right with the siren, on her way through to the quarters she shared with Banichi.

“Don’t take such chances, Jago-ji!” he begged her. “Kindly be earlier.”

“One hears, nadi.” Jago wasn’t inclined to argue.

And would do exactly as she had to do, he was quite sure.

“How does Sabin fare?” he asked.

“Asleep, one believes, nadi.”

A verbal warning, over the intercom: Jase’s voice. “ Acceleration in one minute. Count has begun. Take hold.”

“Go,” he said to Jago. “Quickly.”

He was belted in. Staff had gone to safe positions. He drank the last of the tea, wadded up the cup and held on to it… a physics experiment, he thought, once they were underway. Or he’d just hold it until there was an all-clear.

His heart beat faster and faster.

The first movement was a great deal like the lift’s acceleration, in the core. The illusion of gravity grew stronger and stronger, until the chair seemed horizontal.

He stared at the far wall that was, for the duration, the ceiling, scared, and with no useful place to spend a Mospheiran’s long-cultivated fear of flying.

For no reason and out of nowhere in particular, he thought of his mother’s apartment, and a lost cufflink, and the last visit before things changed in the family for good and all—

It was the last holiday they’d been together. He remembered that cufflink going down the heating register, in a room his mother constantly kept ready for him.

For the black sheep of the family.

He remembered breakfast in his mother’s apartment… and didn’t know whether she was still alive—a human attachment simply lost in the works of nations and captains. He’d had his one chance to go home, and hadn’t even made a phone call.

He couldn’t blame anyone else for thatchoice.

The ship went on accelerating

No way to call out Wait?

No way now…

In point of fact… fear reached a level and stayed there, and fell behind.

The ship traveled, and, different than a flight here, or there, separating him from a situation— Phoenixwas leaving the station, leaving the whole world behind.

While his household, these people around him—they were here on his account, and because of their man’chi, and because their home was always where he was.

Even the dowager, be it remembered, had left the world she championed. There was no fiercer advocate for the old ways of the world, and here she was, outbound with the next generation of her household, to take on whatever humans had done at Reunion—to use hishelp, among others.

Jase only thoughttwo captains ran this ship.

He drew one breath and two, having his bearings, with the world and the station behind him—or under his back, as the axis of the ship went—and getting further away by the second. It wasn’t so bad. He could have drunk the tea more slowly.

No emergency, and they were launched.

They were going to go out to wherever the ship did such things and fold space, bizarre thought. He couldn’t wait to explain that process to Banichi.

And his family, such as he still had back on Mospheira, would have to deal with things in his utter absence, as families could, and did, surviving somehow, and in their own way.

Another set of large breaths. He felt completely lightheaded.

“ Acceleration will continue at 1.2 G,” C1 said over the intercom. “ Emergency movement only until further notice.”

They were on a ship hurtling faster and faster through the cosmos and away from all they knew.

And the whole ship was a place of only crew, only staff—inaccessible to strangers and random lunatics, a place where he didn’t have to worry about assassins and vantages for snipers.

He drew two and three free breaths, in that heady thought.

He was free—for the first time in more than a decade. Give or take Sabin, no one on the ship wanted to kill him.

Wasn’t that a marvelous thought?

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